Crisis in Brazil: Petrobras and the logic of adjustment

November 11, 2015 Petrobras reduced its investments by almost 40%, with consequences on the whole economy: if the indirect effects and total investments were no longer made by construction the negative effect reaches almost 2% of GDP are included.

With its National Congress as emblematic indicator of a crisis that still does not solve your destination, Brazil is on track to close 2015 with unmistakable signs of lack of coordination between administrative spheres – federal, state, municipal, with an average real wage in the peripheries of large cities 7% lower than last year, a global economic contraction of almost 3% of GDP and a contingent of nearly 800 thousand workers less in the labor market. An economic policy – the driven J. Levy from earlier this year – which begins to deepen own fragmentation of social interests, compared to the situation, try to solve on their own circumstances.

From a scenic point of view, it seems that reappears in Brazil one of the idiosyncratic marks its founding capitalism: the open inconsistency of the different parts of the social system, as has been discussed and debated for decades its leading intellectuals. What had been a fairly stabilized political organicidad possibility – or “class conciliation” to use a term Clasico between industry and unions, farming and scientific modernization, banks and popular consumption, etc., during the period “lulista “(also projectable to a few years of the first government of Dilma Rousseff), seems to have entered a phase of disaggregation. The positions and responses begin to be partial, disjointed, fueling an overall picture not too auspicious.

Petrobras and the economic crisis

Being the leading Latin American company, is a negligible link between the crisis of Petrobras and Brazilian GDP contraction during 2015. Compared to last year, Petrobras reduced its investments by almost 40%, with consequences on the whole economy: if indirect effects (subsidiaries, suppliers related to the oil industry, the shrinkage down general of the affected population) and total investments were no longer made by construction (not only include areas oil and gas) the negative effect reaches almost 2% of GDP. Without the measures taken were necessary, as they have warned experts on the subject, this “turn” Petrobras had a major consequence of the shrinking of the economy’s own tax collection measures “adjustment” promoted by J. Levy; It has to do with determining influence it has on the economy: in the 2010-2014 cycle, was responsible for 8.8% of investments in the country, which the company is a key factor, indispensable.

The willingness shown by the “international business community”, rating agencies and global media emblematic with regard to Brazil, Lula and Dilma even own (who chaired the Council of Petrobras since 2006) began to change precisely from the Government, in 2010, he arranged as a regulatory framework for the oil fields of pre-salt – the largest oil reserves discovered in the XXI Century compulsory presence of Petrobras as the only operator, which does not exclude the participation of other companies. From there, not only he started an international and national campaign to “reopen” the clauses (sovereign) Brazilian but began seeking to modify the management of the company, as is clear from the documents that showed the spying NSA Petrobras in 2013. The fall in international oil prices and allegations of scandal-Lava Jato – with a media overexposure permanently expanded the scope for interference on the company continued pressures replacement G . Forster, the assimilation of the output to the “financial crisis” was the eventual “spin” of the company this year, measures compacted with the arrival of new equipment to the Ministry of Economy. But the changes have not stopped there: in recent weeks have taken momentum in Congress various draft amendments on the powers and functions of Petrobras in the pre-salt fields, an issue that seems already to have more chances of that happening , as admitted a few days ago in Morocco’s own J. Levy. The meaning is the same: the “spin” Petrobras is the projection of the logic of setting Dilma Rousseff on one of the most burdensome elements of economic growth, but the most important.

The Workers Party and the logic of adjustment

This change in the investment policy of Petrobras – which last week was in response strike oil, the most important in years, with consequences for own trading internationally is key depending on the settings made in other state areas; by the economic downturn caused, you can get to jeopardize the political survival of the Workers Party itself. Some conclusions should be drawn to this point; both in relation to Petrobras, whose value is in sharp decline, and from a more general point of view, in relation to the choices made by governments in certain moments of its management, with respect to the “logic of adjustment.”

The “logic of adjustment” is difficult to manage a targeted: it becomes a certain speed in an ideological choice that permeates the rest of the set, especially if part of the core of decision-making, such as the Ministry of Economy, or of the main lever the economic growth of recent years, such as Petrobras. From that center a particular “culture fit” in the minds of those who make definition on public policies fades – and in Brazil, in recent months, has partially happened this phenomenon-that moves towards sub-national governments (just just check how arguing governors of different political sign the draft budget “dwarfed” 2016), the lexicons of corporate leaderships (some explicit, for example, in recent documents of the FIESP) and even becomes Some guidance of common sense.

In the “logic of adjustment” – that displacement ranging from the economical choice to the ideological perspective there is a spiral whose control is not always possible to manage, as favorable even Lula himself: the three draft budget 2016 discussed up the time had to be modified by progressively more negative forecasts for next year. And what is most important: as an expression of this path 2015, a social dialectic whose outlook is for greater political and cultural disintegration, is in increasing union protest, either in a completely fragmented National Congress and left in chaos or in identification microsocial processes that multiply from the minimum singularities. In other words, a year of reversal in cohesive terms regarding the progress of recent years; a step backward. Some of that open inconsistency that Brazilian sociology has long characterized in detail.